


All I Want For Christmas Is You

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Childhood Friends, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Presents, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Gift Exchange, Happy Ending, Pining, Secret Santa, chestervelle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 17:43:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13036194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Jo went way over budget with her Secret Santa gift for Dean.





	All I Want For Christmas Is You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [panicsdownpour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/panicsdownpour/gifts).



She’s gone way over budget with her Christmas present.

Jo looks at all the little boxes and glittery paper underneath the tree and cringed. Like almost every year, her family decided to play Secret Santa. They aren’t a big family: after her father died, her mother, Ellen, remarried with a family friend named Bobby Singer, who had taken care of Jo as if she was his own daughter. He did that a lot: another of her father’s friends, John Winchester, was a widower and a bit of a drifter. He usually left his two young boys with Bobby whenever a “job” came up that demanded he’d be gone for weeks at a time, so having Sam and Dean over at the house wasn’t a strange occurrence.

They all grew together like close friends, practically family, and even now, after John’s passing, Sam and Dean keep coming to spend the holidays with them, sometimes bringing their girlfriends along with them. They usually play Secret Santa, because who the hell has money for that many presents? They agree on a budget that’s affordable for three college students (or recent college graduates) that were broke more often than not and the system worked just fine.

Except this year, Jo got the name of the person she wanted to give a present to the most and she decided to make it truly, extra especial. Several hunts on the Internet and one visit to an unsavory record shop that had no business staying open in the twenty first century, she managed to get the perfect gift. She had to put down an extra couple… extra couple dozens of dollars into it. Maybe a little more.

And now she was wondering how she was supposed to eat during January.

“Jo! Your mom says she needs you…”

She turns around so fast she almost spills the eggnog in her hand. Dean grabs her by the elbow and holds her in place to prevent her from colliding against him. For a moment, Jo finds herself staring at his neck, right at the lower spot that his shirt don’t quite cover. Once she realizes she’s thinking, she quickly steps backwards and playfully punches him in the bicep.

“Don’t scare me like that!”

“Sorry,” Dean says, but the way he laughs indicates he really isn’t. Jo can’t stay mad at him (she never could), not when there are crinkles around his eyes and his freckled-covered nose is crunched up in the most adorable way.

“Well, don’t do it again,” she huffs.

“Oh, aren’t we a little cranky?” Dean follows her into the kitchen, mocking her surliness and trying to get her to laugh: “Come on. It’s Christmas!”

“I know it’s Christmas. If it wasn’t Christmas, I wouldn’t have to deal with your annoying ass.”

Dean puts a hand on his chest and gasps as if he’s offended and that manages to get a chuckle out of Jo. He’s a completely ridiculous man.

And Jo has been in love with him since she was twelve years old. Maybe even longer

It wasn’t as if she decided to be and if it had been up to her, she would have sent those feelings right back where they came from. He was her best friend growing up, making her laugh and trying to console her when she was sad about something, so it isn’t completely strange that she had a crush on him since before she knew what a crush was. He’s five years older than her and during her teen years, that difference seemed insurmountable. She was hurt and jealous as she had to watch him parade his apparently endless string of college girlfriends and she had to pretend she didn’t care because she resigned pretty soon to the fact that Dean would never see her as anything but a little sister.

So when she went to college herself, when she didn’t have to see him walking into the kitchen every other day to see if Ellen had food, when she didn’t have to hear him calling her “kiddo”, she decided her crush was a stupid childish thing and she needed a real boyfriend. She forced herself to look at other guys and date them and fall in love with them. She even managed to, a couple of times, before she graduated.

But every time she came home for the holidays, every time she saw him again with his stupid wide grin and his bright green eyes and just the way he managed to make everything seem a little funnier… well, the old flutter in her heart and the knot in the mouth of her stomach always returned. Liken they had never left. Like they would never leave.

Jo has accepted the fact that she will never stop loving Dean. Oh, she doesn’t expect him to turn around and realize she was the one for him like she did when she was younger and she, of course, will never tell him. But it doesn’t trouble her at all. She knows this doesn’t stop her from loving other guys and maybe one day she will find one that she will love enough to spend the rest of her life with. She knows she will always feel a small tug of jealousy when Dean brings home another girl, but she also knows it wouldn’t be fair for him if she acted on those feelings.

So she loves him, in silence, with patience, with the acceptance of something as natural an inevitable as the snow in winter.

“Joanna Beth!” Ellen calls from the kitchen.

“Duty calls,” Jo says.

“Yeah, you better don’t leave her waiting. She might ground you.”

He said it as a joke, but Ellen is perfectly capable of trying to ground her grown-ass, has-her-own-job, lives-on-her-own-apartment twenty five year old daughter and they both know it. That’s what makes it so hilarious, Jo figures as she chuckles to herself and goes inside of the kitchen.

Ellen side-eyes her.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Jo lies and puts on the apron, waiting to receive instructions.

When she was younger, she always complained over the fact that the boys automatically expected her to be the one to help Ellen in the kitchen, especially because Ellen was so very particular and pernickety about how things were handled when she was cooking. Sam had come up with a very democratic solution: every year they draw straws and whoever gets the shortest one has to help Ellen on Thanksgiving _and_ Christmas. Bobby is always the one to hold the straws to avoid any cheating.

This year, Jo is put in charge of the pecan pie. It isn’t the most original dessert, but Jo convinced Ellen to make it because she knew that it was Dean’s favorite. Her mother already has one ongoing crisis with the gravy, so she doesn’t protest at all and only now and then she barks some sort of order Jo already knows at her.

“You need to make it thinner. Otherwise the crust won’t come out right.”

“Yes, mom,” Jo mutters, kind of amused at her mother’s panic as she does five things at the same time trying to get the dinner ready in time.

“Everything has to be perfect,” Ellen continues. “Sam is bringing home this girl Jess and sounded so excited about it on the phone. I want to impress her.”

“I’m sure you will mom. Your food is always good,” Jo says, almost automatically, because Ellen really isn’t looking for reassurance. She just wants to vent a little bit, and that’s fine with Jo. She cuts the strips and start putting them over the pie’s stuffing distractedly. She almost doesn’t see the glance her mother is throwing at her.

“And what about you?”

“What about me what?”

“Why didn’t you bring home a boy?” Ellen asks. She was never one to beat around the bush. “Or a girl or whatever you’re into these days.”

“I haven’t met anyone interesting,” Jo states, shrugging. “Maybe next year I’ll get luckier.”

Ellen grunts that she wants grandchildren and she’s not getting any younger and Jo, as always, replies that she needs money to raise a kid and in order to get money, she needs to work hard. That reply always seems to placate her somewhat, so Ellen moves on to the next topic.

“And why do you think Dean didn’t bring home anyone?”

Now, that was an interesting question. While he was in college, Dean had a couple of serious girlfriends – “serious” meaning, in his case, that they dated for over three months or so. But even when he didn’t, he always mentioned he was seeing this girl or the other and according to Sam, there was a while there where Dean only did one night stands. (Jo and Bobby had kept this information carefully hidden from Ellen, who not have approved).

But in the last couple of years, this seems to have changed. Or maybe not and Dean just doesn’t brag about it like he used to. In any case, Ellen, who will accept grandchildren from the Winchesters even though they aren’t her actual kids, has tried to subtly interrogate him about it during Thanksgiving. Dean dodged the questions like a pro and didn’t give out any information.

So either there is no girl or the girl is so special he doesn’t want to jinx it. In her selfish little heart, Jo wishes it was the first option. In her mind, she reminds herself she wants Dean to be happy. That is the reason she spent and exorbitant-for-her-means amount of money in his Christmas’ present.

“I’m sure if he wants us to know, he’ll tell us,” she replies as she pushes the pie into the oven.

“Yeah,” Ellen agrees. Again, Jo doesn’t know exactly how to interpret the look her mother is giving her, but it doesn’t matter. The doorbell rings, which means Sam is here, which means Christmas’ dinner has officially began.

In their text conversations, Sam made it sound like Jess was some sort of Disney princess with little animals following her around while she did her medical internship. She turns out to be beautiful enough to be one, with long blonde curls and a beauty mark right between her eyebrows. She’s also extremely nice and immediately offers herself to help out bring the plates to the table.

“Well, someone remembers her manners,” Ellen says, throwing a look at her three unruly kids and husband.

Bobby grumps and protests, but he also gets up from the couch where he has been watching TV and drinking beers and goes to help out. In a few minutes, dinner is served and conversation starts flowing. Sam and Jess tell them about how they met during a Halloween party where Jess went as a sexy nurse and Sam went as a lawsuit.

“How do you even go as a lawsuit?” Dean asks, arching an eyebrow.

“I wore a suit and I covered it in pages of legal technicalities,” Sam explains. “It’s a pun.”

Dean looks horrified.

“Well, Jess thought it was funny,” Sam says, defending his terrible sense of humor.

“Bet she was just trying to get you to talk to her,” Jo accuses her and Jess laughs uncomfortably, which indicates Jo she’s right. She probably didn’t care so much about the suit as she did about the guy wearing it, but that’s just as fine. She is an excellent girl and she’s happy Sammy found her.

After they bring out the pecan pie (Dean ate three slices and congratulated Jo on it, which should not have made her as happy as it did), it’s presents time. Jess participated in the secret Santa as an honorary invitee and Jo expects that the present she gave would be more generic than not. The rest, however, are presents people who have known each other for a very long time would give: Ellen gets a new picture frame to hang at the bar, Sam gets a book and Bobby gets an ugly sweater with two Christmas decorations and the word “Balls!” scribbled underneath. Jo deduces Jess got her name, because she gets a very pretty scarf. It is her favorite shade of light blue, though.

However, she doesn’t care as much for her own present as she does for Dean’s. She eyes him nervously as he rips the paper and his eyes light up when he realizes what it is.

“Holy… for real?!” he asks as the vinyl of Led Zeppelin II appears in his hand. He examines it with an incredulous smile and when he notices the names scribbled in the front, Jo can swear she hears him squeal. “Oh, my God, it’s signed!”

She hides her smile by taking another sip of her glass, satisfied. She knew he would like it, but the pure glee in his face fills her with excitement, with happiness. Every dollar that freaking thing cost was worth it just to see him like that.

She was such a fool.

“Whoever gave this to me, thank you,” Dean says, almost hugging the vinyl like it was a teddy bear. “Best Christmas present, ever.”

“Oh, even better than that time I made you a card with macaroni?” Sam asks, pouting.

“You’re an ass,” Dean determines, throwing a napkin at him and everybody laughs. Jo is sure Dean thinks Sam gave him the album, but it doesn’t matter.

Just like it doesn’t matter if he knows she loves him or not. It’s enough that she knows.

 

* * *

 

 

The night ends pretty late, because they kept talking and even playing games until Bobby declares that he has to wash the dishes and the Winchesters have to help him.

“She cooks, you wash the dishes,” he says, with a glare when the brothers protest they’re tied and they’ve drunk too much. “It’s the least you can do. Good looks and charm might get you a woman, but being a fucking gentleman is what makes you keep her.”

“Oh, no, Bobby, please don’t remind me of my terrible singlehood. No girl has come to sweep me off my feet and I will die a spinster now,” Dean says, dramatically gesticulating.

“You’re an ass,” Sam determines as he stands up to help Bobby.

“Sam, you better tie the knot with this one!” Dean warns him while pointing at Jess. “Or Dr. Moore is just going to slip away from your fingers!”

“He might as well!” Bobby supports him. “It’s not like anyone else is going to want your overachieving ass.”

“You’re going to scare her, you silly man!” Ellen protests. “Let’s go up before I have to hear more of this nonsense, girls.”

Jo and Jess follow her, giggling and stumbling in a way that makes Jo think that they’ve both had a little too much eggnog. Ellen disappears inside of the bathroom and while they wait for their turn, Jess’ smile disappears and suddenly she looks very concern.

“I… I was actually very nervous when we came here tonight,” she confesses. Her cheeks are adorably red and Jo is now completely sure they shouldn’t have drunk that much eggnog.

“Why?”

“Well… I wanted Sam’s family to like me,” Jess explains, nervously playing with a lock of her hair. “Do you think your parents did? And Dean?”

Jo almost wants to laugh, but she has the suspicion this would actually be a very mean thing to do to Jess’ face.

“I’m sure they loved you,” she reassures her. “I mean, you’re a very lovely person. I liked you very much.”

Jess’ expression falls into one of pure relief as she reaches to grab Jo’s hands.

“Thank you,” she says. “I’m really glad to hear it. Can we like, be friends now?”

Jo has to laugh at that. The last time someone asked her if they wanted to be friends was probably second grade or something like that.

She falls asleep almost immediately in her old childhood bedroom, with a belly full of food and the cheer of the holiday a good buzz in her head. She doesn’t stay asleep too long, though. A loud whistle and knocking in her window wake her up.

They were expecting the blizzard; that was why they had intended to make a weekend out of this visit. She wipes the fogged glass with her pajama sleeve and tries to look outside, but all she can see is the darkness of the backyard. She clicks her tongue. If she wants to see some actual snowflakes, she’s gonna have to go downstairs to watch the storm from the living room. She wraps herself in a warm blanket and makes the journey downstairs, as quietly as she can. She crosses the dark room trusting on her memory of where the furniture is alone and moves the curtain aside just to take a little peek.

It’s a beautiful spectacle. The wind blows hard, making the snowflakes spiral down, forming unpredictable patterns in the dim streetlight. The yard and street are covered in mountain piles of white that will probably be as high as her knee in the morning. Whenever it snowed so hard during Christmas, it usually meant she, Dean and Sam got to have a snowball fight. They were too old to do that now, but Jo still loves the winter. It reminds her of all the good times she had growing up. It reminds her of home and she will probably remember this Christmas as well and the joy in Dean’s face when he opened her present…

She takes a step backwards to sit down on the couch’s armrest… but she sits on someone’s feet instead. She jumps with a yelp of surprise while the person on the couch struggles with the blankets and raises his head while muttering a soft: “What the hell…?”

“Oh, God, sorry,” Jo mutters. Dean blinks at her, still groggy and with his hair sticking out in every direction. He looks adorable in his flannel pajamas and Jo really needs to stop thinking like that. “I didn’t know… I’m sorry… I’ll go…”

“Wait. Jo, wait up,” Dean calls her. He sits on the couch and rubs his eyes. He grabs his cellphone and turns it on to look at the hour, blinking and grimacing when the light hits his eye. “It’s two in the morning. What are you doing up? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Jo lies. She’s actually currently wishing that the ground would open up and swallow her. “I just… I came to see the snow.”

Dean blinks again and then looks at the window. His face splits with a smile again.

“No way!” he mutters as he stands up. He shoves the curtains aside so they can watch the night outside in all its splendor. “It already started?”

Jo feels her chest warming up as she goes to stand next to Dean while the snowstorm raged outside.

“Hey, where does your mom keep the chocolate? We can make ourselves a mug…”

“Really? You have space for hot chocolate?” Jo stares at him incredulously. “You ate almost half a pie by yourself.”

“What can I say? The pie was good.” Dean shrugs. He’s not sorry for what he did at all. “Come on, what do you say? It’ll be like when we were kids.”

Jo really can’t argue against that. The whole point of Christmas is to look back fondly in the past, so sitting on the couch with Dean, sharing a blanket and listening to the storm sounds like a wonderful plan.

“Man, I love this,” Dean says. “Do you remember when we had the snowball fights and we teamed up against Sammy?”

“Yeah.” Jo chuckles. “Or when like, we made that angry looking snowman and we called him Bobby because he as frowning…”

“That was good.” Dean laughs. “Or when you threw a tantrum because I wouldn’t marry you.”

Jo frowns at him, not entirely sure what he’s referring to.

“Yeah, you remember. One Christmas, you were maybe five or six. You drew this picture of us getting married in a church and I said I wasn’t going to do that, because I was eleven and I wasn’t supposed to like girl things like weddings. You started crying because you thought I was saying that I didn’t like you.”

“Oh, my God.” Jo feels her face heating up and she’s suddenly happy they didn’t turn on the lights of the living room. She doesn’t remember the incident, but she’s pretty sure it must have happened.

“You only stopped crying when I promised you I did like you and I would marry you one day.”

“That’s terrible.” Jo cringed. “I must have been a pain in your ass.”

“Nah, it was cute.” He chuckles. “You were always a pretty cute kid.”

And there it was. Jo tries to laugh it off, but she looks away as she does. She hopes he doesn’t notice.

“You’re not a kid now, though,” Dean added. His voice gets lower and Jo shivers and snuggles more into the blanket.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Just, you know… you’ve grown a lot.”

The fall into a somewhat uncomfortable silent. Dean sips from his mug pensively and Jo tries to the same, trying to seem as calm and collected as she can possibly be, and not as if she’s trying to find a hidden meaning in Dean’s words as if they’re a puzzle she can’t quite solve.

“Why were you sleeping down here anyway?” she asks, trying desperately to change the topic.

“I wanted to give Sam and Jess some privacy,” Dean answers. “I mean, Jess had a bit more eggnog than she probably should have and Sam is paranoid that Ellen will catch him, so I don’t think they were going to do anything. But still…”

The idea of her mother walking in on Sam while he had sex with his girlfriend makes Jo almost choke on her chocolate.

“That is so nice,” she comments, when she finished laughing. “You were always looking out for us.”

“I mean, I kind of had to. It was my job, looking out for you two.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Jo insists, though she could understand why Dean would feel that way. With his dad being gone so often and with her following him and Sam around like a puppy, he probably felt responsible for them, even as kids. It was no wonder that he turned into a bit of a party boy and a womanizer when he went to college: he was enjoying a freedom he hadn’t had before. But he always had the same good heart Jo loved and admired the most about him.

She’s thinking of a way to bring this up without sounding so obvious when she realized Dean moved closer to her on the couch and is just staring at her intensely.

“What?” she asks, forcing out a smile so he doesn’t realize how much this affects her.

“Thank you for your gift. You… you didn’t have to do that. It was very special.”

Jo freezes and stays quiet for so long that when she finally manages to find her words, they aren’t credible anymore.

“What? No, that wasn’t… probably Sam… or mom…”

“Ellen would’ve given me something practical, like socks or underwear. Sam gave me an Ipod for my birthday because according to him, I need to ‘modernize my collection’.” He draws quotes in the air and rolls his eyes, like the mere idea sounds ridiculous to him. “Which leaves Bobby and you. And Jess, I guess, but Jess doesn’t know me that well and Bobby never goes a cent over budget.”

All of those were incredibly good points and Jo isn’t sure how she thought he was never going to find out. Her cheeks are burning again and she starts trying to explain herself:

“I wanted… I thought…”

Dean’s hand is on hers and Jo’s tongue becomes so heavy she has to stop talking.

“I loved it. Thank you.”

She looks down to where his fingers rest over knuckles and tries to swallow to get her heart, that’s suddenly beating in her throat, to get back to its proper place.

“I just thought you would like it,” she mutters pathetically when she recovers the ability to speak.”

“Yeah, you’re always thinking about me. I don’t think I ever… dammit, Jo. It’s like I keep taking you for granted and you keep waiting for me to get my head out of my ass.”

“What?” Jo frowns at him. “What do you even…?”

She stops talking, not because she understands, but because suddenly Dean’s lips are covering hers. His breath is warm and tastes like chocolate and that’s pretty much all Jo has time to register before he backs off, just barely. His gaze is cautious, interrogating. He’s waiting for her to react, to say something. But Jo’s mind is in complete disarray and her mouth is dry, so she wouldn’t have been able to speak even if she had known what to say.

So she lets her emotions call the shots, all those years, all the longing she has held back for so long. And what they want is for her to kiss him back. She puts her mug down on the carpet and places a hand on his cheek to pull him in towards her again. Dean puts a hand around her waist to hold her and kisses her with a hunger she didn’t expect, like she didn’t expect to answer in the same way. It’s like a dam has broken and everything that it had been holding back comes pouring in, and they understand each other. Any word or confession becomes superfluous as Jo settles on Dean’s lap and he tangles his fingers on her hair.

She still has to ask when they broke away:

“How… how long have you known?”

“I guess I always did,” he says. “In a way. I was… waiting for you to grow out of it. I was sure you would and it would be for the best. And then one day you came home with this guy Aaron…”

“Oh, God.” Jo chuckles at the memory of one of her exes, probably the only one Dean got to meet.

“… it kind of broke my heart.”

Jo draws circles with her thumb over his cheek. His stubble feels rough underneath her fingertips.

“Why didn’t you say anything sooner, you silly, silly man?”

Dean chuckles and it takes Jo a second to understand it’s because she used the same term of endearment Ellen uses with Bobby.

“I was waiting for you to be ready,” Dean explains. “Then I realize you’ve been ready since we were kids and I was the one who needed to get a clue.”

He’s completely right, but Jo knows she doesn’t need to tell him that. She just kisses him once more as Dean lowers her down in the couch and wraps the both of them in the blanket. Her heart feels like it has grown three sizes and is about to burst out. She tucks her head under Dean’s chin and close her eyes, soaking in the warmth of his body, the softness of his hands as they pet her hair…

“Dean?” she mutters. “This isn’t a dream, is it?”

Dean’s chest rumbles with his laughter. He kisses her on the forehead.

“Sleep,” he tells her. “And I’ll be right here in the morning to tell you it isn’t in a dream.”

In the morning they will be wake by a scandalized Ellen, who spots them slumbering together in the couch when she wakes up to make breakfast for everybody. They will have to endure Sam’s jokes and Bobby’s glare and later Dean will receive a sermon about what will happen to him if he hurts Jo that’s just slightly less severe than the one every one of her previous boyfriends has received. But no one will be terribly surprise. It was like they, too, had always known.

In the morning, they both will wake up with aching necks and cold feet despite the blankets. They will both smile at Ellen’s screaming and Dean will hold Jo close and mutter in her ear that it wasn’t a dream after all. And Ellen will get even angrier when Jo burst into a laugh of pure joy, because she just won’t be able it to contain it anymore.

But right now, the wind outside has stopped blowing and Jo softly falls asleep to the rhythm of Dean’s breathing. It’s new and it’s familiar at the same time. It’s everything that she always imagine it would be.


End file.
